EVE General Discussion

The DUST experiment really was next-gen gaming thinking. Two co-meshed games, enmeshed together with each other. That makes the sad part even more tragic. CCP's a comparatively small company I guess, they didn't have an army operation for developing, deploying, making it the hyped-up seemless experience everybody was pre-ordering and waiting to buy.

But anyway, I still think some kind of WiS scripted or non-scripted adventures could help the game get and retain some new players. Common observation of friends cajoled into trial accounts in EVE:
Evening 1: "Beautiful space art! Spaceships design is amazing..."
Evening 2: "Wait, is there a way to manually control your ship? You mean, no twitch at all?"
Evening 3: "Can I get out of this ship and see my char? Is my char just my ship?"

These are not dumb people or impatient people. They're just new people checking out any kind of internet game, and deciding whether they want to check it out again tomorrow after work/school.

EVE's bath water is a little murky, but that's because of the precious lil baby in it. Just because MMO players are used to being twitch-based or having chars Pvping with toons with boots on the ground doesn't mean they're noob/dumb. It just means that's what they're used to when they test drive a new MMO.

Except that a lot of people don't have a VR equipment, don't want to buy one, and don't want to use one.
It's whole different thing to sit quietly at the pc with a keyboard and a mouse or to use this kind of equipment. Things are not automatically better just because they are new.
Gadgets don't make a game deeper.

Well what made Dust so tragic wasn't that it didn't work, it was that CCP made mistakes which forced it into being a completely separate game. This is despite constant protests from the community. Things like PS3 exclusive or skirmish 2.0 turned the game from what should have been an awesome FPS w/meta game into a lobby shooter which lacked all of the best qualities of most lobby shooters. Now unfortunately they've given up on all of the great meta stuff to make a good lobby shooter. That is the real tragedy.



I believe you are confused. Nova has not been touted as VR unless I am mistaken. Was there an article I missed because the last news I heard on Nova was just a PC shooter no VR or any accoutrements.

No, the F/T Person shooter needs to be much more like a Space Western/Kinghts, ala, Firefly/Serenity, Honor Harrington or BSG ground stuff. Stations need to be scary places with security that's tied to their space security status. Going planetside means there are 'stations' planetside as well as PI stuff.

Have military engagements to take down PI installations like out of StarCraft, not via FPS. Let the DUST orbital bombardment tactics mesh with an active Strategic game instead of a shooter. Then you can have EVE proper entities engage in both offense and defense of space above an active warzone.

There is massive stuff that could be done with what exists RIGHT NOW. I know CCP is aware of this. I think they are a little gun shy after so many marginal products after EVE. I think that might be able to be mitigated if they actually engaged us, the player base, rather than guess as what we might like.

... with no connection to the EVE universe. Its a separate game.

CCP doesnt want success for their FPS games. First they made Dust 514 exclusive for the outdated PS3, (shortly before the new console generation was released) and now they think they will be successful with making the 123,923,393th standard FPS game on PC. They are again wasting millions of EVE's revenues.

I'd be surprised if their server side code was in Python. I could see the code on our clients done that way but server side should be something more normal like C Sharp or something faster. I haven't dug into how the code is done, but it seems to be quick enough.

I'm also not sold on the idea that they hear us enough. They actually have several 'buffers' between the normal player base and themselves (most Devs do this for reasons of sanity). IF the CSM was doing it's job properly, then yes, the Devs would be hearing us well enough. However, after reading the minutes of the meeting with the Devs, it seems like the CSM do a good job of representing themselves and their views or their factions views but fail to represent everyone's views. I can't blame them either, that's a hard job and for most people it would make being a CSM rep not worth it.

So, just from my observations, there seems to be a kind of tone deafness that exists with the Devs and with the products they choose to pursue. The new FPS is an example. They seem to be trying to undo the mistakes of DUST and stick with conventional FPS wisdom. It might have some success but it will also just be an "also ran". I would never commit to coding into an environment where it's almost impossible to shine. Going up against Halo, CoD and various other FPS's (MMO or not) just doesn't scream success to me.

Doing that with a hard integration with EVE would set it apart from all those others and make EVE attractive to a whole new group of players. Is there a risk of failure? Sure, but it's at least the same as the risk of failure trying to compete separately.

what about walking in space then?

**** that would be kind of awesome but totally frivolous just like WiS

whoa was that a radial menu

I have no idea how I'm ending up opposite Jenn all the time now, normally I'm right there with her...

SWTOR showed it was 'possible' to combine T/F PS, starship combat and dogfight/fighter combat. Yes, they have to be separated by server and a mechanism but they can exist in the same game. Now SWTOR made a lot of mistakes with it's implementation and offering, but it still showed it was possible.

EVE could easily exist across a T/F PS, RTS and spaceship MMO universe. Lets try a little imagination, maybe think of it as an 'ad' for the game.

You're flying along in your blingy starship when a small gang of frigates and destroyers way more powerful than yours traps and pins you down. They demand ISK, they demand goods. Not wanting to lose your ship, you give in... they blow you to space plasma anyway.

Your clone comes back and you start hunting them down, not only in the stars, by in their stations. You walk up to a seedy bar where one of them is engaged in a conversation with another capsuleer across the table. They don't recognize you, you're just another punk capsuleer in wasted space. You draw your weapon and blow their grey matter all over the back wall, another one down. Sure the authorities question you, and you show them your Kill Right on the capsuleer, they pat you on the back and say "Good Shot" then let you pay your 1,000 ISK bill to the bar for the clean up of the mess.

You know of a planet where another one keeps all his industry at. You launch your forces into a landing on the planet and start assaulting the industrial bases, reducing his extractors, warehouses, launchpads and command posts to rubble. Hurt them in the pocketbook.

Then you retire back to your reincarnated blingy starship with a new found respect for the lack of honesty among pirates and will go down fighting looking forward to your revenge...

EVE, where you don't get mad, you get even.

It works in theory, but Jenn could be correct in that the implementation might be beyond CCP's abilities. So, I think it's possible but the political will to make it happen would be something entirely different.

A good book that has a lot of these elements built into it is by David Weber: Field of Dishonor and the entire Honor Harrington series is a good template fit for EVE and what the various levels it could operate on could look like and how they'd interact.

WiS will happen whether anybody wants it or not. *shrug* The question is will ccp faceplant hard on it worse than they did before. If EvE is ever killed it will be suicide.